Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has admitted that the Federal Government is facing extremely serious challenges which no other government has faced in Nigeria’s history.
Vice president Osinbajo said this while explaining what the Economic Sustainability Committee which he chairs plans to achieve.
“We must communicate to our people where we are now, and that we can no longer assume we are still where we used to be.
“We are faced with a challenge that no government in the history of Nigeria has ever faced. So, we have to redesign our economic planning and change our thinking”, he said.
The Committee was formed by President Buhari to design a response to the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic as well as the falling prices of crude oil in the Global Market.
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The crippling effects of the Coronavirus as well as the fall in crude oil price to less than $20 per barrel foretells grim times ahead for the Nigerian Economy.
Speaking on the mission of the Committee, Yemi Osinbajo said:
“what Mr President has asked us to do is to devise a strategy in order to be able to keep the economy going and also make provisions to ensure that we are able to retain jobs and indeed create more.”
“We also need to develop the Nigerian economy in a way that we will even take advantage of the challenges of these times and convert those challenges to opportunities.”
He thereafter spoke on the areas of focus for the Committee and what it needs to do to salvage the situation:
“what we will need to do is something that is bold, radical and one that our people can understand and buy into.
“We must design a broad vision that takes into account how to implement a big plan inclusive of a focus on mass local productivity and mass employment.
“The big plan of government is to find a way for us to be able to do mass housing, increase agricultural production, ensure massive local productivity by among several other options, increasing support to MSMEs, and majorly improve avenues to put more cash in the hands of our people and also make them productive,” he noted further.